1. Project purpose

The opportunity to advance the use of standards and receive feedback on how they are used is important and remains to be articulated at the international level.

This project will investigate how self-conformance statements should be specified and be made publically available to enable transparency in reporting of how standards are implemented, especially in respect of solutions involving common semantics and re-usable data models that are technology neutral.

Version: 1.0

2. Project scope

Standards, especially in the area of common semantics and re-usable data models, foster interoperability in solutions that address business and government requirements for information exchange, thereby enabling greater effectiveness and efficiency in trade facilitation and electronic business.

The project will document requirements related to:

• ways in which user communities can identify and declare conformance with standards in order to foster interoperability,
• how self-conformance statements can be made publically available to improve transparency in the actual implementation and use of standards.

3. Project deliverables

The project deliverable will be a requirements document that will elaborate on the issues involved and provide an outline of what actions would be required to provide a self-conformance service.

Development (if needed) to implement a self-conformance service may involve development of technical specifications, development of templates for conformance statements for existing standards and development of a web infrastructure for the service. The actual development of these are out of scope for this project.

4. Exit criteria

The exit criterion is the completion of requirements document.

5. Project team membership and required functional expertise

Membership is open to experts with broad knowledge in the area of business standards and methodologies in the context of cross-domain, cross-border requirements and solutions in trade facilitation and electronic business.

Heads of Delegations may invite technical experts from their constituency to participate in the work to foster global participation.

Experts are expected to contribute to the work based solely on their expertise, and to comply with the UN/CEFACT Code of Conduct.

6. HoD support (required for technical standards, business standards and UNECE recommendations)

List at least three Country heads of delegation who support this project, and include their written expression of support using the template in annex IV...
Not required, as the deliverable is not a UNECE Recommendation or a UN/CEFACT Standard.

7. Geographical focus

The geographical focus is global.

8. Initial contributions

Background materials include:

Draft Recommendations for Conf Clause 20070801.doc

Requirements for Conformance Project 20070801.doc

SelfConformanceUNCEFACT.xls

ISO/IEC 15944 part 2. "Registration of scenarios and their components as business objects"